You: Bus-stop blonde holding a latte Me: Ever hopeful! Write me?

You know, if James Blunt had spent just two minutes on Craigslist, maybe he could have avoided that whole pathetic cliff plunge ...

You: Smiled at me on the subway. You were with another man. You're beautiful.

Me: [Flying] high. (Please hurry — I have a plan, and I'm almost done lining up my stuff.)

Harumph. Apparently, resolution isn't quite as dramatic as a do-or-dive missed connection.

Luckily, though, most attempts to reconnect aren't quite so dire. Here, anyway, on the Seattle Craigslist's wildly popular Missed Connections site, people are just looking for people — maybe someone specific, maybe an intriguing stranger — and maybe a response.

"Girl on Bus 43 Saturday afternoon"

Dave Gerton isn't desperate — and he missed the same connection twice.

The Capitol Hill man was moved to post his first-ever MC personal ad after encountering a certain strawberry-blond woman on the bus: "You have a kindness about you, obviously have friends, an open mind, and a sweetness in your voice," he posted. "I snuck a few peeks at'cha and damn if you aren't cute too!"

Sweet, no? Just wait. He's "semi-retired." From Microsoft. At 40.

But don't go responding if that's not really you. He will know — because he saw her again, two days later, at Trader Joe's. Which prompted his second-ever MC post: "You walked by me, and I almost dropped my basket. Is that her? Naaaah. Couldn't be. It is! No waaay! ... I got a closer look this time, and damn yer still cute."

Gerton said he's never done any online dating, and he's not sure exactly what it was about "her" that drove him to MC, but it appears to be rather powerful.

He's checking for replies about "every 15 minutes," he laughed — but not in a holding-his-breath-till-he-turns-blue kind of way.

Gerton rates his expectations at only "fair to middlin'."

"I don't really expect much to come out of it," he said. "But still ... it seems like we keep running into each other."

"I am soooooo intrigued"

Another Seattle poster is keeping his expectations in check — and his identity a secret, which seems to be a big draw of the whole MC concept.

"You have dark brown/black short hair," he posted. "Oh my gawd! You are so damn cute! ... Are you single? Married? Who cares? ... I am soooooo intrigued with this woman. Not like stalker intrigued, but just interested in a sane, platonic way."

Bless his pining little heart — he's amusing and articulate, plus he wrote us back, unlike the majority of posters we e-mailed.

But he's not holding out much hope for a connection. "In my case, I wasn't even expecting a response," he wrote in an e-mail. "Just the fact that I was able to throw the compliment out there and that someone reads it. Maybe they are the person it was directed toward, or maybe they were at the same place. Either way, once they realize it's not them, it might make them think, 'Hey, I guess I'm not the center of the universe.' "

No? But maybe they are the requisite "hot number in the little black dress," or the "guy with the huge sheepdog" (though — ouch — the poster actually is attracted to that guy's friend), or the "hot construction worker in the roundabout."

Or maybe they're lurking instead of looking, or just dropping in, even if they miss the "Missed Connection" concept a bit, replying just to reply, posting just to post — trying, perhaps, just to connect, at all, with anyone.

"Hope springs eternal"

It's a powerful drive, making a connection. It's inspired movies, songs and even dopey reality TV. Missed-connection personal ads aren't new, either — alternative newspapers have run them for years.

But those only run once a week — what if your special someone has moved to the next state by then? What if you want a connection now?

Then you send a nice thank-you note to Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist. It was his idea to add Missed Connections to the popular community-building Web site — and it appears it was a good one.

When the site launched in Seattle in March 2001, 11 hopeful posters joined in. You could say interest has grown a bit since then. Last month, there were 2,506 Seattle-area posts. Anyone, anywhere, can post for free in Missed Connections. Our anonymous Seattle poster said the rules for doing so are simple and straightforward (have a valid e-mail address, for example, and agree to the terms and conditions).

But still, what gives? Could there be any more impersonal place for a personal ad? Why even bother?

"Hope springs eternal," Buckmaster wrote in an e-mail. "People really do value long shots. A little hope is far better than no hope in people's minds. The concept of getting a second chance (when you let the initial chance slip by) is a powerful one, even if the second chance is a low-percentage one."

"Cute doc at Safeway"

Low-percentage is good enough for Seattleite Kim Wooldridge, who posted her first MC ad after running into a guy who "was just totally my type" at the grocery store.

"I don't know if he's my dream guy," she said. "But if he was and I didn't do anything about it, I'd feel sorta crappy, like I hadn't tried."

So she tried. Her post reads, in part: "You were wearing scrubs and a black fleece. I was in a green jacket and still sweaty from the gym. Your badge indicated that you were 'Dr. K.' I tried some lame flirting move on you at the checkout counter, but it's hard to strike up a conversation while you're buying kitty litter."

In retrospect, she said, "I didn't want to seem like one of those desperate 30-year-old women with two cats."

Well, yes — she's 30. And she has two cats.

But you can forget the desperate part. Wooldridge has a fine-sounding job — as a senior account manager for a small Seattle tech company — and she only checked for Dr. Maybe-Dreamy's reply three times one recent day.

"It's not even so much that I hope he'll write back," she said. "He was just so cute, I would kick myself if I didn't take the 5 percent or 2 percent chance that he'll read it."

(Or perhaps, she reasoned, he reads the paper.)

"We're going out again tonight"

Sometimes, with Missed Connections, all you need is a chance, however small. Sometimes, that's all it takes.

Craigslist just started soliciting testimonials this month from folks who actually do reconnect. None have been submitted from Seattle yet, but people-seekers in Portland; Washington, D.C.; Vancouver, B.C.; and parts in between all have found someone — and sometimes, quickly.

A Vancouver, B.C., poster wrote: "I went out on a date with this guy and tried to call him two days later, only to discover that some jackass had stolen his cellphone (and with it, my phone number). Decided to put something up on Missed Connections, and to my shock I had an e-mail from him within half an hour. We're going out again tonight."

Even if you're not looking for someone, there's no harm in checking to see whether someone is looking for you. Wooldridge does — not necessarily every post, she said, but through a purposeful search of names, places and/or descriptions. Kind of like an ego-Google, but with potential.

And even if you're not looking — or your special someone isn't — you still could end up finding each other.

"Often, perhaps even in the majority of cases, it is the friends and associates of the person sought in a Missed Connection that actually see the posting, recognize who is being sought and bring it to their attention," Buckmaster said.

It worked that way for one poster in Portland, anyway, who found an old friend after someone else passed along a Craigslist posting. And it worked for this poster from Washington, D.C., who wrote: "I rang up a customer who later posted on Missed Connections. The next day, a friend of mine forwarded me the posting and asked if I knew the person working at the store. Funny enough, it was actually me."

But what if it weren't? Can you imagine how embarrassing it'd be to think you were her "gorgeous guy with the girly voice," only to find out that she meant Ace from "American Idol"?

Guess you could call that a Misunderstood Missed Connection — and that for sure would drive beautiful Mr. Blunt right off the edge.

Sandy Dunham: 206-464-8243 or sdunham@seattletimes.com

We're looking for a happy ending. Have you ever met the object of your Missed Connection? Give us the deets.

Email: talktous@seattletimes.com